| Director | P.A. Straubinger, Peter-Arthur Straubinger |
|---|---|
| Genre | documentary film |
| Runtime | 95 min |
| Country | Austria |
P. A. Straubinger first encounters inedia in a television documentary about Nicholas of Flüe, a 15th-century ascetic who was reported to have lived 19 years without eating. Later, Straubinger starts research on the internet and subsequently has the desire to meet people practising inedia. He travels through different countries and interviews people who claim to nourish themselves with light, vitality, Prana or Qi, among them Jasmuheen, Michael Werner and "Mataji" Prahlad Jani. Straubinger also consults different people from classical and alternative medicine and science and looks for explanatory models for inedia. Straubinger conveys that for him, the materialistic world view of modern science falls short.
Straubinger's conclusion is credulous and contradicted by the available evidence. Some breatharians have submitted themselves to medical testing, including a hospital's observation of Indian mystic Prahlad Jani appearing to survive without food or water for 15 days, and an Israeli breatharian appearing to survive for eight days on a television documentary. In a handful of documented cases, individuals attempting breatharian fasting have died. In other cases, people have attempted to survive on sunlight alone, only to abandon the effort after losing a large percentage of their body weight.